Going gluten-free

About three years ago I went to the doctor for acid reflux. She ran some tests, and told me I had both H. pylori and coeliac disease. She then suggested I take some antibiotics for the H. pylori, and remove all gluten from my diet for the coeliac disease.

This seemed to me to be unscientific. Why change two variables at once, especially when one of them is a trivial change and the other is a massive lifestyle alteration? So I took the pills, kept eating gluten, felt better, and didn't think about it again.

A few weeks ago I realized that for some time I'd had persistent stomach aches. Remembering my test results, I decided to see if that was the cause. It's difficult to run a controlled double-blind study on yourself, but I did the best I could. First, I went gluten-free for a week.

Do you have any idea how hard that is? I barely made it a week, and even then I had slip-ups with things that you'd never expect to include gluten. I can confirm that gluten-free bread and pancakes are pretty disgusting, though I did have some good gluten-free toast at the Pfunky Griddle. Gluten-free pasta's edible, and gluten-free Rice Krispies are quite good.

I also did some reading, and it turns out that exposing children to gluten before six months increases their odds of developing coeliac disease by, like, 5x. When I asked my dad about this, his response was "Wait, even cream of wheat?"

So there's that.

After a week, I was feeling better. People say it takes months to really be clear of the stuff, but I just couldn't take it any more. Next step, gluten overdose! I ate a loaf of bread in a day, deep dish pizza, all the gluten I could get. And it didn't hurt me.

So do I really have coeliac disease? Probably. The test they ran is very high specificity. But if it's causing me a problem right now, at this stage in my life, it's not obvious enough to be worth throwing out my entire diet.

Those of you who have serious gluten issues, I wish I could help you. Going gluten-free removed much joy from my life, and I hope you handle it better than I did.